24. He’s marked me. I’ll return the favor—
24
He’s marked me. I’ll return the favor?—
Chapter Playlist:
“Addicted” – Kelly Clarkson
“Going Under” – Evanescence
“I Will Break” – Flyleaf
“Ashes” – Celine Dion – Lauren Babic Cover
EVERLEIGH
I hate him with the fire of a thousand suns!
Because my pussy is burning with the fire of a thousand fucking suns. I don’t know what’s worse. The pain down there or the one on my chest. My whole body is shaking.
He pushes inside me again, thrusting with a fervor, and the shock of it so intense that I almost forget to breathe. No matter how much I try to fight, I can’t. My body is his to use, to own. I’ve worn fingernail-shaped indents into my palms, the ropes chafing my wrists.
I clench more around him.
My body is betraying me. It’s like I’m drunk on him. Full-body tremors and tingles erupt all over me. Something’s happening, mounting, building, the pressure tightening stronger and stronger until?—
—shiiiiiiiiit! I convulse. Throwing my head back, I cry out from the power of the orgasm ravaging my system, firing up all my nerve endings, electrifying the reward center of my brain, and frying all my rationalities to hell.
Acheron freezes in me, tilts his head with his dark predatory eyes, scarlet pupils glinting, no…gleaming. With a low chuckle, he thrusts inside me again, surging another wave of bliss through me, splashing my body with liquid heat like he’s splattering light and color on a canvas.
“Did you just come on my dick?” he muses, a smirk forming.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” I rasp, turning to my logical side. “It’s just a byproduct of?—”
He dives for a kiss, crushing my lips with his, forcing me to open. But for the first time, he doesn’t need to. I kiss him back with everything. He tastes like a sinful deity, like fire and ice, and even…suffering. I can’t deny our connection anymore.
He’s filling me. I only got a glimpse his cock, but the most insane part? The same blood drops he carved into me…they were faint, but the silver scarification is undeniable.
Acheron took a knife to the core of his masculinity and carved his art into the organ.
And he’s not just long, he’s thick . I’d heard of guys like him. They’re few and far between. At the Catholic school I went to, one guy had a twelve-inch dick. His friends would line up willing girls, and Mr. Twelve Inches would judge them, choosing whichever was pretty enough to ride him.
I never lined up.
With Acheron, it’s far more than his immense length.
I saw something. When he faded in the middle of cutting me. So different than how I fade with Cherry where I’m arguing with my inner self and unable to stop those dark, erotic thoughts. No, he went somewhere darker. Like he was seeing a vision of hell. Demons blazed in his eyes. I’ve never felt, never seen that depth of pain in anyone before. He gave me a fragment of vulnerability.
Even with all consent and choice ripped from me, it felt like the greatest gift he could have given me.
I don’t know what to make of it—of him.
He fucks me like he carved me, slow and piercing. His immeasurable muscles bulge with each movement.
“Fucking can’t fathom how irresistible you are,” he says a breath above my lips, pulls out halfway, then thrusts again, I gasp. It’s far too simple with how wet I am, not just with my blood.
When he picks up the knife again, a whimper leaves my throat. My eyes stray to the glass walls, and acid swirls in me at the sight of all the sick men getting off on this.
“Look at me, Little Quill,” Acheron commands, tipping the knife against my skin and carving another blood droplet spilling from the heart. Seated to the hilt, throbbing inside me, he holds my gaze. “I’ll detonate every molecule in your body. And transform your emotions into my mastery. They will see love and hate dance and bleed together. Fuck them all, Everleigh. Because I see you…” he whispers in my ear while sinking his cock in deeper, harder, stronger. “Focus on my movements, my force inside you.”
Oh, God!—how can he say things like that to me? This is the real God of Art. Not the one he shows on a stage.
I can’t help but lose myself in his eyes as he cuts me. Adrenaline and dopamine drown me. I’m caught between the pain of him filling me and the sharp sting of the blade.
I hate him. I love…I hate the way he makes me feel, the way his touch brands me, the way every inch of him inside me is both destruction and salvation. But…but…
God, it feels so good. The pressure grows in me again, swirling in my core like a storm. I can’t stop it. I can’t even try. My body responds to him in ways I can’t control.
Another cut. More blood. This time, he doesn’t dab. He lowers his mouth to my chest and touches his lips to the etching. I flinch, breath hitching at the pain and my blood on his lips. And then, with his eyes like a dark fever, his tongue slowly traces the seam of his mouth.
He’s so transfixed. But he hypnotizes me. Only we exist, orbiting one another. He’s the sun, and I’m the moon reflecting, shining with the after light of his art.
The unbearable tension snaps again. The pressure snaps, and I explode, my body clenching around him. I shatter everywhere, the climax surging hot streams of pleasure through my blood. I unleash back-to-back moans as he kisses me.
I feel him—his breath, his heartbeat syncing with me. I can’t pull away. I don’t want to. I kiss him back, desperate, hungry.
“Fuck, you’re flawless!” he says, lifting the knife, and I swallow as he cuts the silk bonds, freeing my wrists.
I clench my hands into fists, but before I can think about fighting him, he touches me.
“Mmm, please, I—don’t?—”
But I do.
His hands are everywhere, gripping, touching me with callused fingers from his years of art. They rub my nipples, then pluck them before he lowers his head to pull one into his mouth.
At first, I grip the duvet, fisting it hard, but I can’t stop my twitching fingers from straying to his dark hair. It’s the purest, blackest silk. One tug, one clench of my pussy, and he’s groaning against my breast, suckling it harder, flicking the nipple in staccato strokes of his tongue before circling the hard bud. Like…like he’s painting with the tip of a brush.
The God of Art shifts to my other breast, giving it the same treatment and nibbling with his teeth. I squeeze painfully around him, so close to going over the edge again from my hypersensitive nipples that tug on an invisible cord for my clit.
My fingers stray lower, aching with need to see beyond his eyes. But the second they brush the edges of his mask, Acheron seizes my throat, constricting my airflow in a direct warning. I struggle, raking my nails into his arms.
“Never. Touch. My. Mask,” he commands with a daggered glare.
I nod through streams of acid tears.
He releases me, his hardened gaze softening. And then—oh, fuck! He removes his clothes, one by one. Like a consolation prize, giving me his body instead of his mask. My lips part with the gravity of his scars once more.
The men outside gasp at the art scrawled all over his chest and arms. It roams along the sides of his legs, too.
Acheron dives for me again. I jerk from his lips trailing down, tongue sweeping along my throat until he lands upon the design he carved into my chest. I’m wearing his art, wearing him, forever. He kisses the outline, his mouth gentle against the raw skin. It’s too much, too intimate, too real. I can’t escape it. I can’t escape him.
I’m drowning in him.
He circles his hips, then grinds hard against me.
I go over the edge again. Screaming this time, digging my nails into his strong arms. And he tips his head back with a hearty laughter. The men outside laugh with him at my expense. But Acheron does not laugh like them. He’s cherishing my pleasure. Like my orgasms are a gift to him.
Desire shreds me.
The pleasure is still there, lingering, throbbing beneath my skin, and I want more. I’m as sick as him.
The blade flashes out of the corner of my eye.
Maybe we are so fused. On a soul level. Because a violent heat overcomes me. That fire ignites?—
He’s marked me. I’ll return the favor?—
and explodes! The second he thrusts inside me again, I swipe the knife, grab the handle in a death grip—hoping it won’t be my death—and watch the white shock in his eyes as I stab the God of Art’s shoulder.
He roars. I laugh. And cry. And break down.
Because he’s coming!
“Naughty. Fucking. Gorgeous. Girl!” He thrusts and jerks through each punctuated word, then buries himself so deep in my core and releases hot streams of cum inside me.
That fucking devil!
You go, girl! Cherry squeals, waving her pompoms in a sexy cheerleader uniform. Show him who’s boss! Next time, aim for the spleen—really makes a statement! Oh, wait, never mind. Forget that. But the shoulder, seriously? You’re totally flirting.
I just fucking stabbed him! WhatthefuckwhoamIwhathaveIdone?! He’s going to kill me!
He’s bleeding onto my chest.
Oooh! Cherry thrills, buzzing her wings. Maybe your bloods will mix in this crazy mating bond where you can hear each other’s thoughts.
I blink. Twice. Or maybe it’s just unsanitary on steroids.
Spoilsport. Don’t worry, Evie. I’m sure he’ll be flattered.
When Acheron turns his chin slowly, violent and calm all at once, and trains his deeply hooded eyes on me, my insides are leveled.
He’s going to strangle me!
Girl, don’t blink twice—you’ll miss the part where he starts monologuing about how impressed he is. This is “power couple goals”! Besides, stabbing alphaholes is trending. And blood rituals.
His penetrative gaze does squirmy things to my insides. He doesn’t say anything. He’s so still, so brutally tranquil, it makes me want to scream. But the endorphins are still coursing through me, the high of it all, and I feel… I feel like I’m floating. The pain and the pleasure, the agony and the ecstasy—I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
Acheron’s eyes are dark and full of something I can’t name, but I see the satisfaction in them. He’s made me his. He’s marked me, I’ve marked him, and there’s no going back.
A slow, predatory smile slinks across his face, disappearing beyond the edges of his mask. It turns my blood cold. And then…he pulls out the knife, licks the damn blade, and presses it to my lips, smearing the remaining droplets there. I’m frozen. My limbs are paralyzed. Not my voice.
“Please don’t kill me,” I whisper.
“Kill you? You fucking killed me , Little Quill.” I’m about to protest and say I didn’t stab him that hard, but his lips are on mine, kissing me with such fury and passion, it rattles my bones and twists my heart into hundreds of knots. I arch my throat and touch my fingertips to his wound, reveling in how he trembles beneath my palm and the groan resonating into my throat.
He twitches inside me. I squeeze again, unable to stop from feeling him, feeling everywhere.
“That’s my girl, sucking my cock. Such a sweet, little slut.”
He doesn’t try to stop me. He doesn’t flinch when I touch his mask and smear some of the blood there. He simply regards me with that dangerous smile, proving how sick and twisted he is…and I guess he’s really rubbed off on me.
So damn proud of you , Cherry whimpers with emotion. My little stabby muffin all grown up.
Acheron touches his lips to my brow. Then pulls out abruptly.
All of the adrenaline is crashing, the endorphins fading. I double over onto my side, moaning from the pain. Blood and cum spills out of me, staining the antique duvet.
“Acheron,” I spit, my voice stinging as I stab a finger at the duvet.
He tips his head back and laughs. I give him my best death glare as he fists his cock, expelling the remaining cum before he lifts his hand, now covered in my virgin blood.
How can I be angrier about the goddamn duvet than the pain in my pussy, than him taking my virginity? My cunt is burning, inflamed, stretched to its excruciating limits.
I freeze as the God of Art leans down, kisses my cheek, and murmurs, “Be right back,” before he exits the exhibit. My jaw drops. He has no shame as he strolls right out in nothing but his birthday suit with my blood and our juices on his dick. And the small, gaping wound in his shoulder.
My mouth waters, and heat fills me at the sight of his backside. Why should I be surprised? Every inch of him is steel. His ass is no different, those globes packed with rock-hard muscle. And…scars. Oh, god! Horror splits me at the knowledge that someone else did that. The scars are old. How old?
By now, all the men have put their privates back in their pants. But I notice semen on the glass. Pools of semen.
“Gentlemen!” He sweeps his arms to each side, then bows exaggeratingly, dripping blood from his shoulder. “You are dismissed. I trust you enjoyed the exhibition. I will contact you for the date and time of the next in the series: The Art of Obsession.”
No shame as he turns around, enters the exhibit again, and advances to me.
The men disperse. But there’s semen on the glass.
Acheron stands before me, drowning me in his towering shadow.
Gathering the sheets around me, I turn a trembling finger to the walls. “S-s-semen on th-the g-glass.”
Acheron smiles down at me before taking me in his arms, stealing my breath.
“There’s semen on the glass,” I blubber into his neck.
I feel sick. I feel like I’m going to pass out. Bile swirls in my stomach.
The next thing I know, I’m doubled over the toilet in the luxurious bathroom down the hall. Acheron’s body heat surrounds me as he holds my hair back and urges tenderly, “Let it out, Little Quill. That’s my gorgeous girl.”
“There was semen on the glass!” I sob as he pushes the handle, flushing the toilet.
Acheron cups my chin and touches something small, dark, and sweet upon my lips. “Open.”
I accept the truffle, enjoying the sweetness melting in my mouth following the taste of retch. I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to kiss me without something else.
“You’re in shock. Come with me.” He says, carrying me toward the bath.